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The psychosis-afllicted Messerschmidt succeeded in keeping his life under such control - not least by means of his Character heads - that even right up to his death he was able to carry out normal commissions. The displayed bust of Márton György Kovachich (1743-1821), a historian, a custodian of the Buda university library, and one of the most eminent scholars of the Enlightenment in Hungary, was, as far as we know, the last of these commissions in Messerschmidt's oeuvre. Kovachich commissioned the portrait himself, directly from the artist in Pozsony. This fact is proved by a letter from Kovachich dated lst May 1783, and brought by Kovachich's assistant, together with some red wine and tobacco, to Messerschmidt. In the letter, found among Messerschmidt's papers after his death, Kovachich gave exuberant thanks to the artist for the "immortal work of art", which was already standing in his room in Buda.
The bust is made, like the Character Heads, in the early Neo-Classic style, preferred by Messerschmidt since the years 1769-70. His works of this period are of an accentuated plainness, but nevertheless have a vigorous modelling and a consequent structure. He omits everything occasional or instantaneous, giving the works a timeless, monumentlike character enhanced also by their firm frontality. These stylistic characteristics of Neo-Classic aesthetics are, however, coupled with an exact portrayal of the individual features, so that Messerschmidt's portraits remain very close to a realistic appraisal of human individuality. In contrast to Messerschmidt's early Neo-Classic portraits, where it is almost omitted, the socle in the late works is accentuated. The meticulous drawing of Kovachich's Hungarian apparel is a trait of the sober style of the time, often termed Zopfstil. Martin Georg Kovachich's bust, made almost a year before Messerschmidt's death, proves that the artist's creative powers remained unbroken to the very last. With this work he succeeded in creating one of the most remarkable sculptural portraits of the Central European Englightenment.
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